I'm Anna. During a recent ER visit with my son, while his imaging was still underway, a staff member approached us with an iPad asking for payment. I wasn't watching my son in that moment — I was staring at a screen asking for money.

I'm also a Registered Nurse with a master's degree in healthcare administration. I know how hospitals operate. I know the laws that are supposed to protect patients. If anyone should have seen this coming and known exactly how to handle it, it's me. It happened anyway.

Under EMTALA, the federal law governing every ER in the country, hospitals aren't allowed to delay emergency screening or treatment to ask about payment. But that's not the whole rule — CMS's own guidance says payment inquiries can't "interfere with or otherwise compromise patient care" at any point during the visit, not just beforehand. The problem is, "interfere" is vague enough that hospitals can walk right up to the line without technically crossing it. Nothing paused. No one stopped the imaging. But a payment prompt showed up in the middle of my son's care anyway — while we were scared, distracted, and in no position to push back.

I recognized what was happening because I've spent my career in this system. Most people don't have that. If a nurse with a master's in healthcare administration can still be caught in this gap, it is absolutely happening — unnoticed, unchallenged — to families with far less power to question it. This isn't a one-off. It's standard practice, and it survives because most patients don't know they can push back.

I'm asking CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz to:

1. Make it explicit: no hospital may present a payment request, device, or prompt to a patient at any point before their emergency treatment is fully complete — not "as long as it doesn't interfere," full stop.
2. Direct CMS to proactively audit hospitals for mid-treatment payment demands, not just wait for formal complaints.
3. Apply real EMTALA penalties to hospitals found demanding payment during active care — the same as hospitals that delay care outright.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       No parent should be holding their scared kid's hand in an ER and have a bill shoved in front of them before they even know what's wrong. I don't want another family standing where we stood, watching a screen instead of watching their child. Sign this petition and help make sure the next parent in that room gets to focus on their kid — not a payment prompt.